Polls may confirm the angst that some GOP lawmakers are feeling about the governor's full-throated attack on the unions, fearing that slippage of Rauner's approval rating could hit their own numbers, particularly those labor-friendly Republican legislators who may be forced to vote for anti-labor initiatives.

Whatever "momentum" Bush has among the moneyed crowd is offset by the commanding lead Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has among Illinois Republican primary voters, according to a new poll commissioned by The Illinois Observer's e-newsletter, The Insider.

The George Lucas museum will open in Chicago come 2018. Who better to explain how an entire society can go from a sparkling clean hi-tech vision of the future -- to a dirty broken-down totalitarian regime in the time it takes a baby to grow into Mark Hamill?

Governor Pat Quinn's administration is poised to launch a vast and expensive modernization of state government's financial wiring and work processes that will revolutionize operations and likely displace ossified workers, upend encrusted work habits, and mothball-rusted file cabinets.

A former president of the Chinese American Bar Association, Liu credits the efforts of earlier Illinois Asian-Americans, who broke professional barriers, for laying the foundation of her ascension to the Illinois appellate court.